As efforts continue to present food in distinctive, pleasing forms, attempts have occasionally been made to use color to enhance the appearance of food products. Such efforts have generally met with little or no success, sometimes because the result has not necessarily been appetizing to look at, but also because the available techniques for introducing color into food products have been rather limited in the types of variations that can be introduced and in the types of foods that can be treated.
With the increasing general awareness of nutrition, food products generally known as pasta have enjoyed a considerable increase in popularity and consumption. However, prior to the discovery which is the subject of this application, only a very limited number of techniques have become known for introducing interesting, attractive varieties of colors into pasta products. Perhaps the best known of these has been simply altering the color of an entire pasta piece so that it remains one uniform color. An example of this approach is spaghetti and noodles given a green color in their entirety. This product affords the opportunity to produce a mixed color effect by preparing and serving a dish comprising a mixture of pasta pieces some of which are entirely green and the remainder of which are the usual white or off-white color associated with uncolored pasta. However, pasta pieces in which each piece contains more than color have not been known prior to the present invention, even though such a product would seem to be of potential interest.